HTC unveils holiday flagship and the first in a new product line, the HTC One A9

If you thought Samsung’s latest wave of smartphones looked a lot like the iPhone 6, wait until you get a load of HTC’s new handset.

The HTC One A9 is powered by Qualcomm’s octa-core Snapdragon 617 Soc (four Cortex-A53 cores @ 1.5GHz and four more Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.2GHz) alongside Adreno 405 graphics, up to 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (expandable via microSD card slot) depending on which model you get.

Other noteworthy specifications include a 5-inch AMOLED display operating at a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture and optical image stabilization, a 4-megapixel front-facing shooter with f/2.0 aperture, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1.

The handset packs a 2,150mAh battery and ships with Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box with HTC’s Sense overlay.

From the back, the HTC One A9 looks almost identical to the iPhone 6 save for the camera / flash placement and the actual branding. HTC said this wasn’t intentional and that their new flagship is the first in a new product lineup for the company.

As Ars Technica explains, the new A series line will be one in which design is put front and center while the existing M series will continue to serve as the company’s technological leader.

The HTC One A9 will be available in silver, gray and red starting at $399.99 sans contract which includes six months of unlimited Google Play Music as well as HTC’s Uh Oh protection plan. It’s available to pre-order as of writing and should begin shipping early next month.